


Tears of a Candelabrum

by LaEnchanteRose



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: After effects of the curse, Bad Dreams, Did I mention how sweet these two are?!, Don't know why it keeps putting freeform after lumiette!, Dreams, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, It's not so easy to get over you know, Lots of Angst, Lumiere and Plumette, Lumiette - Freeform, Nightmares, Plumiere, Prepare to die from cuteness overload, Sad!Lumiere, These two are just soooooooo sweet!, WARNING: Have a kleenex box or a handkerchief ready, but plenty of fluff too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 12:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11081256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaEnchanteRose/pseuds/LaEnchanteRose
Summary: The curse has been lifted and everyone is physically whole once more. But for at least one resident of the castle, the emotional effects are proving much harder to overcome.





	Tears of a Candelabrum

He watched in horror as her wings inexplicably failed and she plummeted downward. “Plumette, Plumette!” he cried as he caught her in his arms.

She did not reply, at least not with words. The brown dots that were her eyes looked intently into his and- using what seemed like every last ounce of strength she had- she brushed the feathers of one of her crippled forelimbs across his face, then down to his chest, stopping to rest on his heart- or rather where his heart would have been if he were still human rather than a metallic shell.

And then the wing dropped, her eyes lost focus, her body stiffened…and she was gone. “Non, mon amour, non!” he would have had tears in his eyes, were that possible for a candelabrum.

“Lumière!”

She was calling his name. But that was impossible- all that lay in his arms now was a feather duster, an inanimate object, a mere cleaning tool.

“Lumière!”  

His mind was clearly playing tricks on him. He wished it would stop, so he wouldn’t have to constantly be reminded…

 “LUMIÈRE!”

His eyes snapped open. It took a few moments for them to focus, but when they did, he found himself looking directly into another pair of eyes- brown eyes. Beautiful, REAL brown eyes that were set into the sweet, precious, caramel toned face that he loved so much- the face of his wife. She was alive- and she was human!

Almost afraid to believe it, he looked down at his own hands. And they WERE hands- lovely flesh and blood hands. Then, it had all been…

“A dream,” Plumette spoke up, as though she had read his thoughts. “You were dreaming, mon chérie”.

“Non. I was having une cauchemar,” the maître d' corrected.

“What about?” Plumette asked gently.

Lumière opened his mouth to answer her, only to find that he could not speak. Instead, a lump lodged in his throat and a loud sob tore out of him. When he thought of what could have been- WOULD have been- if not for the enchantress deciding to have mercy on the Master by lifting the curse even though the last petal had already fallen… He couldn’t bear it. Another sob wrenched from his throat.

“Mon amour, what is it? What’s wrong?” Plumette asked, looking alarmed.

“I…I saw the life drain out of you. I was…I was helpless to do a-anything but hold you and watch as y-you turn…turned,” Lumière choked out.

Plumette knew her husband was referring to more than just the nightmare. “I’m right here, mon étincelle,” she soothed him, pulling him toward her until his head was resting on her chest and then using her hand to brush away his tears.

Normally, that loving gesture would have cheered Lumière up almost instantly. But tonight it only reminded him of what he had missed for the last ten years, what he had come dangerously close to never experiencing again. He knew he should consider himself lucky- after all, he and Plumette could have spent the decade like poor Garderobe and Cadenza, never able to so much as lay eyes on one another. But he didn’t.

After all, what good was it to be able to hold your lover, or dance with her, when you were made of cold, hard brass and couldn’t enjoy the feel of her soft, warm body (or the feel of ANYTHING, for that matter!) in your arms?

And then to have risked practically everything to save her, only to have it appear to have been for naught… The thought that he had let her down, that he had FAILED her- that had been the most devastating of all. The mere memory caused something deep inside the maître d' to break, and he began weeping uncontrollably. At last they were set free, the tears he had been unable to shed on that horrible night when they had nearly become (HAD become, momentarily) lifeless antiques to be forgotten in some dark, dusty corner- the tears of a candelabrum.

“Shh, shh,” Plumette murmured comfortingly. Her heart ached for her amour. Until that night, she had been amazed at how well he seemed to have come through the curse and how it had nearly ended (or rather, DIDN’T end!).

Everyone else in the castle had struggled- Chip had nightmares, Mrs. Potts winced every time someone set a tea cup or pot down a bit too roughly, Chapeau had somehow grown even quieter than usual, Garderobe and Cadenza virtually never left one another’s sides for fear of being separated again (nor would they let FrouFrou out of their sight- the former barely even let the poor dog out of her ARMS!), and Cogsworth…well, he mostly grumbled about his wife. Not to mention the maid’s own uneasy relationship with feather dusters, along with the anxiety she grappled with every time one of her legs happened to fall asleep!

But Lumière had been his usual, jolly, exuberant self. Plumette had been glad for him, but at the same time she had thought it rather odd that he had managed to escape unscarred. Now she knew that he hadn’t- and that, in fact, he was almost certainly the most affected of any of them.

Really, she should have picked up on it much earlier. None of them had spoken much about The Night- what was there to say, really? After all, they all knew what had happened. No need to go into the gory details. But the former feather duster DID know that her Lumière had been the last to turn. _Meaning he was forced to watch the rest of us die, how awful!_ The more she thought about it, the more ashamed Plumette was of herself for being so slow to catch on.

Gently, she began to stroke her husband’s auburn hair. “Days in the sun/When my life has barely began/Not until my whole life is done…” she sang softly, rocking in time with the words.

“Will I ever leave you,” the maître d' picked up the tune, his tears at last slowing.

Plumette smiled. “You know, I think we were actually pretty lucky, you and I,” she said.

Lumière’s mouth dropped open in shock. _Lucky?! Is she out of her mind?!_ “How can you possibly say that?! You died in my arms!” he protested.

“Oui, but do you realize that, out of all the couples in this castle, there was only one who was not forced apart during that terrible decade?” Plumette pointed out.

The erstwhile candelabrum was about to argue when he realized with a start that his wife was right. _Garderobe and Cadenza, Beatrice and Jean…even Cogsworth and Clothilde, though I don’t count them. How can I, when the fool was actually GLAD to be rid of his wife for awhile?! How did I not see before that mon coeur and I were actually given an incredible gift?!_ “Merci, ma chérie, for helping this old candlestick see the light,” he said.

 “Don’t call my husband old! And I think you mean candelabra!”  Plumette teased, playfully swatting at her amour’s shoulder.

Lumière laughed. “I love it when you tease,” he cooed.

“Wait a minute, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?!” Plumette waggled her eyebrows at him, pretending to be upset.

Lumière smirked. “Maybe,” he said. Then, suddenly remembering something, he grew serious. “What was it that you wanted to tell me that night?” he asked.

Plumette didn’t ask what night her husband was referring to, or how he had known that she wanted to tell him something. She didn’t need to. “Nothing much. Just that I felt like the luckiest feather duster alive,” she responded, her eyes twinkling.

 _Did I just hear her correctly? I can understand feeling lucky in terms of not being separated during the curse…but while she was DYING?!_ “Really? How so, ma Plumette?” Lumière inquired.

“Because I got to spend my last moments with the person I love most in the world,” his wife replied, pressing her lips to his.

Oh, how the maître d' had missed that! And suddenly he felt a fire in his heart more intense than any that had sparked forth from his hands or head in all the years he’d been a candelabrum. “Je’t'aime, ma chérie,” he whispered when they were forced to come up for air a few minutes later.

“Je’t'aime, mon chérie,” Plumette whispered back.

Enjoying the spell that seemed to have fallen over them, the couple fell silent after that. And within just a few minutes, Plumette had slipped back into slumber. Lumière, however, lay awake for a bit longer- listening to the steady, reassuring beat of his wife’s heart.

**Author's Note:**

> And so ends my first Lumiette fic EVER! Hope you like! In my headcanon, Lumiere proposed to Plumette during Adam and Belle's wedding ball (a proposal that was ten years overdue- he had intended to do it on the night of a certain ill-fated masquerade ball!), and they married shortly thereafter.
> 
> "Days in the Sun" is a very special song for them, which I might go into at a later point (in a different fic).
> 
> And finally, a quick French lesson: "une cauchemar" means "a nightmare" and "mon étincelle" means "my spark" (apparently, the latter is what Babette calls Lumiere in the Broadway version of BATB- and it was just too adorable not to use!). Everything else I think you should pretty much be able to figure out (and if you can't, just ask me in the comments and I'll translate for you!).


End file.
